Red Faction II: Multiplayer

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Details and movies of four-player deathmatch.

By IGN Staff

Four-player deathmatch is more or less de rigeur in first-person shooters these days. If you don't have it, people are going to do all sorts of nasty muttering behind your back -- how many polygons are they really pushing, stuff like that. Thus, it's pleasing to see that Volition has upgraded Red Faction II with the coveted four-player split-screen, doubling the number of players available in comparison to its predecessor. In early form, the multiplayer game runs quite well, too, with several different game types available for up to six participants (although only four of them can be human).

The selection of game modes goes like so:

Deathmatch -- If you don't know what this is, we have to wonder where you've been for the last four years. Everybody kills everybody else.

Team Deathmatch -- As above, except you're only supposed to kill a little over half of everybody else.

Arena -- This is set up like Rocket Arena, or the similar Last Man Standing modes in many other games. If you are killed, you're out of the game, with the last player alive the winner of the round. Thus, this mode promotes survival and defense more than Deathmatch.

Team Arena -- See Arena, but with two teams of players.

Bagman -- Like a game of tag, where the player with the bag tries to hold onto it as long as possible, and the rest of the players try to kill him and take the bag. The winner is the one who held the bag longest at the time limit.

Team Bagman -- The addition of team gameplay to this mode makes it a little more interesting, since the bagman has a few friends to help defend him.

Capture The Flag -- The most popular of team games, where two teams compete to try and grab each other's flag.

Regime -- Like Bagman, except the MacGuffin is a big silly dictator's hat, like Chancellor Sopot's.

Three-man teams are a little on the thin side for something like CTF, but since the levels are designed around a relatively small player count, the team games run well enough. Free-for-alls are what most players will probably choose, though, since the player limit is just about right for deathmatch. Not to mention, setting Doug on fire is one of those things that never gets old:

Burn! Burn! Burn!

All the single-player weapons are available for multiplayer games, with a completely customizable arsenal. There's no limit to the number of weapons in a game, and you can pick and choose exactly which ones you'd like to appear, as well as the default weapon. Weapons are not modeled in 3D in multiplayer -- instead, they're represented as flat polygons to save system performance. They're not quite so pretty that way, but it does make it easier to distinguish between guns. Area-effect weapons are also differentiated with an orange halo, so you can tell whether it's safe to immediately start shooting.

Clear, simple, and saves polys to boot

The maximum number of players on the map at any given time is six, which can be split any way between humans and bots (albeit up to a maximum of four human players). Six bot characteristics can be adjusted, making them more or less aggressive, faster or slower, campy or not-so-campy, and so on. At present, the bots still seem a little on the wimpy side -- they have a tendency to stand still and try and simply shoot it out with you, usually resulting in their messy death -- but that aspect of the game is still being tuned and improved.

Damage Enhancer is fine, but SlowMo...

The power-ups are neat, but they seem like they might need a little bit of adjustment so far. There are two in particular: a damage enhancer, which doubles the amount of harm you can deal out to an opponent, and SlowMo, which is a little more complicated. SlowMo lets whoever picks it up run around at full speed while the rest of the map moves in slow motion -- thus, they're easy pickings. This is a fine idea in principle, but right now it seems like the item needs a little adjusting. The pace of the game drops considerably, and if the fellow who got the SlowMo is separated from the rest of the players (which happens unpleasantly often), the essential result is that nothing happens for the duration of the effect. If the SlowMo lasted, say, about half as long, that would probably sort things out.

Going into the blades

Level design, on the other hand, seems to be well-tweaked at this point, although the current preview version has only a partial selection of levels. The environment is a factor in various ways, some related to the universal Geo-Mod concept or common to several stages (like Quake-style bounce pads), others specific to a particular level. Every stage has some walls that can be destroyed, to remove cover or open up secret areas with power-ups, but the Blades level, for example, has gaps and holes with rotating fans at the bottom. You don't want to fall into those, in case you're wondering. They're easy enough to avoid if you're paying attention, but the clever player can take advantage of elements like that -- bouncing an opponent over the edge, say.

We look forward to picking up a new version of Red Faction II soon -- seeing more of the single-player game is obviously a priority, but the new game types and improved animations in multiplayer will also be worth checking out. The character animation seems to be a little inconsistent as yet, with bots all of a sudden floating around stiff-legged. Glitches like that should be tidied up in time, though, and for now, even with four players, the engine holds up quite well under the pressure. That's very good news, and hopefully it will be followed by more of the same.